


Sing for Absolution

by Summertime_saddness



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Loneliness, Non-Explicit Sex, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 18:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8025046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Summertime_saddness/pseuds/Summertime_saddness
Summary: Spencer can afford it. He can afford her.





	Sing for Absolution

“Baby, are you alright?”

The lights from the hotel are the wrong color for both of their skin tones, turning their flesh a sickly shade of yellow, blue veins turning off green. Spencer wonders if they had just gone to his apartment if it would have been better or worse. Worse, he thinks, but anything might be better than the chemical clean smell of the room that even her perfume can’t mask. 

Spencer has money. A lot of it actually. He doesn’t pay for things like vacations and complicated cell phones, and cable. Nearly all his clothes are second hand. When he puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans he imagines who else put their hands in the same place, if their sweat also bled through the thinning fabric, dampening the outside of their thighs. 

He buys other things instead: first edition books with worn down spines and stains on the dedication page, he buys ties he’ll never wear, multi patterned and ornate, he hangs them carefully in his closet next to the trench coat he won on eBay for $250. He buys artwork and expensive cheese, sends his mother books and stationery and her favorite pens every month; he’s a snob when it comes to hair gel.

He can afford it. He can afford her. 

He used a payphone in a gas station two hours from his apartment. There were no cameras, only truck drivers and buses trying to gas up before the long drive out of Virginia. He puts on an accent over the phone, it’s stupid, he knows, but it makes him feel safer, protected. 

“And are you looking for a full service with Madeline or...?”

“Full.” He answer quickly, before the Kind Professional Voice on the other end says anything else, before he loses his nerve, or sweats through all his clothes. 

The Kind Professional Voice rattles off the pricing, the rules, what to expect, Spencer nods through it. He read through the website, twice, paid attention to the fine print, he knows what he’s getting himself into.

Spencer has had sex exactly 7 times. He’d counted. Eleanor Davis had curly brown hair and more freckles that Spencer could count; every time he saw her he discovered 5 more. She worked at the coffee shop near his graduate school and wrote erotic poetry. They were both 19, both virgins, he thinks they both were in love. She’d moved away right before he joined the academy, with promises to write, to keep in touch; that the Pacific Ocean and a move to Ireland couldn’t keep them apart. Turns out it could. 

Then there was Robby, whose parents named her Roberta unironically. She had dark hair and blue eyes and couldn’t say words that began with “S.” He didn’t love her, but he loved the sounds she made when he kissed her, he loved the softness of her hands against his skin, and how she always smelled faintly of maple syrup. It was brief, she was gone before they could be something tangible. And then there was Maeve. Or more like, then there wasn’t Maeve. Her existence for him had always been the reality of her absence, a hole that cut into him rather than filled something within him.

When Madeline knocks on the hotel door Spencer knows what to expect on the other side. She’s a prostitute. A hooker, a whore, sex worker. He’s seen her face cut up and throat torn out at every crime scene. Blood unraveling onto the concrete like yarn unraveling in a cat’s sharp claw; red froth staining the pavement like a scar. Her breasts are firm and sit high on her low cut top, but every time her skin shines in the light of the room all he can see the handle of a knife, a razor blade, a screwdriver, sticking out against the pale flesh. When she leans into him, straight white teeth sparkling at him, he can already smell the decay coming from her rotting mouth: death has already taken root. It’s inevitable. 

He wants to rattle off to her the statistics of her profession: the fatality that was reinforced in her every step, the probable brokenness of her childhood home, how many abortions she’d had, how many things did she do that she didn't want. But he clenches his mouth shut, presses his tongue against the back teeth so hard that he can taste the blood in his mouth. Or maybe it’s her’s, from the kiss they’d shared earlier, maybe the knife wound or gunshot to her belly had already filled her lungs with blood. When he opens his eyes to look at her he’s surprised to see that the blood has not yet begun to drip from her mouth.

“Hey, are you sure you’re alright?”

She has a hand on him now, on his upper arm, soft fingers stroking from where his flesh is already bare. He doesn’t remember when she helped him take off his sweater. He can feel the goosebumps spreading across his skin like a wave of heat. He doesn’t know whether to lean in or pull away. 

“Y-yeah,” he stutters, his left hand twitching that way it does when he’s nervous sometimes, fingers tapping a pattern onto the corduroy of his pants. 

Madeline nodded slowly, pushing some of her dark hair out of her face. Her eyes are surprisingly sharp, and they watch him carefully. With another quick brush of her hand against her hair, her demeanor swiftly changes, she pulls away from Spencer gently, rounds her narrow shoulders into something more comfortable. She sends him a smile that is almost shy, titling her head down to look at him through her thick lashes. 

“I’m...nervous too.” She half whispers, taking a slow step towards him. “You’d think it’d get easier, but sometimes it still feels like my first time.” 

She smiles at him and reaches out to grasp his hand.

“We can go slow, as slow as you want.” She says softly.

Spencer swallowed thickly, his sweaty hands felt like someone else’s in the gentle grasp of Madeline's slim fingers. She pulled it up, slowly, before placing his palm softly against her breast, her brown eyes shone like gold in the lamp light. 

Spencer’s hand shook against her breast, fingers digging into the soft pull of her blouse for purchase, the last time his hands were on a woman clear in his mind. They are kissing again and this time Spencer does not taste blood, but the minty tang of her breath and fruity undertones of her chapstick. She smells like perfume, a floral scent that Spencer tries to focus on as their combined hands work to remove her shirt. 

She pulls back.

“Are you good to do this?”

Spencer nods and leans in to kiss her again. 

 

Afterwards, lying in the starch infused sheets of the hotel room, the sweat cooling in micro increments on their bodies, Spencer watches her. Madeline, he learned, laughed when you kissed her knees and didn’t like having her belly button touched but would let someone do it since they payed for it. Spencer didn’t though and as a reward she had stayed for longer than their allotted time, eating room service french fries and watching reruns of Law and Order. If Spencer closes his eyes he can imagine that she smells faintly like maple syrup, that he might open his eyes to find new freckles dancing across her nose, or her hair might be the red brown softness of Maeve's.

“I have to go.” Madeline says softly, already putting on the rest of her discarded clothes. She turns to him, watching him watch her, before leaning down to kiss his cheek. 

“You know who to call if you want to see me again.” 

And just like that she is gone and Spencer is alone again in the empty room that smells that bleach and cheap candles. He feels like a half dead body at a crime scene, body splayed out against sheets that do not belong to him, face frozen in half shame, eyes very marked by the loneliness of his end. 

He knows he’ll call again.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, not really sure what brought this idea about, but I had to put it on paper. title is from the Muse song! 
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


End file.
